[Apocalypse Roulette] Dante Rosas: Nine-Tenths of the Law

[Fayth]

The methodical scratch of pencil on paper and the low hum of the radio are the only sounds in the apartment. Dante's slow, rhythmic breathing is swallowed by the radio, his slight shifts in posture nearly silent.


It's strange, this silence. Even at the witching hour, there is some sort of noise going on in his apartment building: a television left on, a near-incoherent pre-dawn argument, a couple having morning sex. Even if it's only the slam of a door as someone comes in from their third shift job, there's something, but this morning, there is nothing. It's as if the building is holding its' breath, waiting.


The radio shifts into static for a few seconds, then, louder than the fuzzy music coming from it before, the announcer speaks up.


"Hey, guys, just got some weird news..." The normally lethargic DJ sounds more alert, an undertone of confusion in his voice. "There's like, heavy police presence all over the city right now... not sure what's up with that, but my girlfriend just texted me that there's a bunch of blues over by her apartment, and I can see the lights of another couple cars from here..."


As if his announcement conjured them, police lights flash across Dante's blinds, punctuating the DJ's words.


"Don't go anywhere, guys, you know how the blues work..." The DJ laughs, a dry sound that crackles into the apartment. "Just stay in for a few hours... pretty sure you can do without the booty call, right?"

 

[DZerpic]

Dante couldn't sleep that night. Worst thing is, he can't figure which of all his problems, troubles him the most. He leave the young and gorgeous lady in the paper limbless, as he drops the pencil on the desk. He gets up and turns the radio off,


"Tired of it anyways" he thinks to himself.


The pencil rolls by his hand to join the rest of its kind, like with a mind of its own. The wooden floor barely makes a sound as he walks by.


His old room, back in Buenos Aires, had the same flooring. He learned fast how to walk on it without waking his father up. You've got to walk on the beams very gently but not necessarily slow, else, the cracking noises would echo through the house.


Dante reaches the window facing the street, across the room. The distinctive patrol car’s lights hit him right in the face. Blinded, he steps back by instinct, his eyes, accustomed to the room's faint light. Back on the window, he sees the cop car, no one else around.


“Fuck… Where are they?” he whispers worried.

 

[Fayth]

Thunk. Something, maybe a fist, hits a wall upstairs. Thunk. Harder now, it hits again.


Another patrol car joins the first. Thunk goes the noise upstairs. The officer steps out of the first car, walks around to the back, pulls something out of the trunk. The second officer steps out, something bright and yellow in his hands. Thunk goes the noise again. He walks toward the nearest telephone pole and starts to unwind the police tape in his hands, setting up a perimeter.


Thunk.


Someone down the hall, on the same floor as the banging, yells, "shut the fuck up already!" Thunk thunk. As if in response, the noise speeds up. There's something else under the noise now, something low and indistinct filtering down through the floor.


"I said shut the fuck up!" The someone yells again. Thunk thunk. The sound underneath the banging gets louder.

 

[DZerpic]

Thunk. Dante feels as if his heart stops beating. He looks to the roof, as if expecting something will come crashing down. At least, it feels like it could. He takes a deep breath. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Exhales, he feels better. Distant, he hears "I said shut the fuck up!". Thunk Thunk.


"Thunk!" as if cracking a joke. Dante grins a little more relaxed. He takes a look at the street and sees the yellow tape set up around his building. "Alright" he thinks "this is serious." It's not a simple case of domestic violence, it's something else. He never got his house taped by the cops! But he's calmer now, he can think more clearly. Thunk. He ignores it now. He's more worried about the cops, it doesn't look they're coming for him. That's reassuring.


Dante walks up to the door and looks through the peephole...

 

[Fayth]

In the fish-eye view of the peephole, everything at first looks to be fine. There is his neighbor-across-the-hall's door, looking as sturdy and firmly closed as ever. To the left, the edges of another neighbor's door are just barely visible. To the right, however, is a trickle of red liquid slowly moving to the left, filling in the cracks in the tiled floor. It seeps into the small holes and scuffs left by years of use, with an occasional wave of more liquid.


Now that he's at the door, Dante can hear soft ripping noises coming from the same direction as the liquid.

 

[DZerpic]

"What the Fuck?!" Dante's eye is like glued to the peephole. He's frozen, while the liquid's slowly moving across the hall. He's got a hunch it's blood. He tries to convince himself otherwise, but he knows his instincts are always right.


He searches nervously his pockets, still looking through the crevice. Turns to his right, the desk. He lifts and throws a couple of papers anxiously looking for the keys. They aren't there. Not below the drawings, not among the pencils. He taps his pockets again while searching the room with his eyes and rushes to the jeans he kicked before.


"Voila!" he finds them! Hastly, he unlocks the door, goes through and shuts it behind him.


"What the fuck am I doing?" he mutters to himself as the sudden rush of adrenaline he experienced vanishes. He suddenly finds himself in an awful situation: alone in a dark small corridor, blood touching he's shoes as red hand dragging him to hell.

 

[Fayth]

To the left, the hallway extends, a few doors punctuating the walls until it ends at a door leading to the stairs. To the right, about six feet away, lies the source of the blood.


Lying on the ground, unmoving, is a man with his throat torn out. His clothes are bloodstained, his dark brown eyes staring lifelessly past Dante. Crouched in front of him, back to Dante, is another person. The stream of blood from the obviously-dead man trails under the crouched person, extending into the hallway. Past the bloody scene is an open apartment door, and past that is another end-of-hallway door leading to the other staircase in the apartment.

 

[DZerpic]

Dante steps back, left hand silencing his gasp; body petrified, hard as the concrete wall he's pushing against. Two things are clear: First, the man lying on the ground is dead, and Second, the man crouching has lost his mind. He won't even try to talk him out of whatever it is he's doing.


A few seconds pass. Absolute silence except for the munching, ripping and moaning of the crouched man.


"Where are the cops?" Dante asks himself, finally leaving that frozen state. Very slowly, he walks backwards to the stairs on the far end of the hall. His eyes staring at the stomach-turning scene. His heartbeat seems so loud, he thinks it may attract the attention of the violent man.

 

[Fayth]

Dante's feet faithfully carry him backward from the scene toward the stairs one step at a time, his footfalls silent underneath the sound of the man... eating?


From above, the thunking noise has not ceased, and finally someone upstairs yells, "Alright, fuckwad" and a door is heard to slam open. The crouched man freezes, then slowly cranes his head upward. His face turns just slightly to the side, enough to expose his bloodstained jaw. He has five-o-clock stubble stained red, and a strip of flesh hangs from his mouth. The flesh falls to the ground as his mouth opens, and the man stands slowly, head tilting upward as far as it can go.


Bang bang bang! Comes the unmistakeable sound of a fist hitting a door. Bang bang bang! and the man in front of Dante shudders, a whole-body chill starting at his head and rippling down to his bare feet.

 

[DZerpic]

Dante stopped for a moment. He never saw anything like this. A cannibal. Not only that, but he's "feeding" in the middle of the corridor, it's like he doesn't care if he's seen. He must be some kind of psycho, must have some kind of mental illness.


But it was in the way he moved Dante felt something was really, really odd. He moved like an animal, hunched, arms hanging, legs bent; he even made those odd noises, like groaning, moaning and mumbling. The spastic moves where even more terrifying than the fact that he was eating raw human flesh in the middle of the hall.


Dante couldn't stay there. He whished he'd gotten back into his apartment. But who knows? he may've been next on this guy's feed-list; he was eating his neighbor next-door, after all.


He had to get out of there, leave the guy be, or eat or whatever he wanted to do. The cops would take here and the victim was already dead. Dante didn't wan to follow in his footsteps, so he just slowly and carefully took the stairs upwards. The man on the next floor was about to smash his neighbor's door, Dante felt he had to go check that out. Maybe he could even convince them to help him with the cannibal.

 

[Fayth]

Dante emerged from the staircase just in time to witness a struggle between two people who could be reasonably assumed to be the yeller and the thunker. They were wrestling in the doorway to an apartment, the man in the apartment bearing down on the man in the hallway.


The man halfway out of the apartment (the 'thunker', probably) was morbidly obese and pale, his hair hanging down in yellowed hanks, eyes fixed unblinking on the man trying to resist (the 'yeller'). The yeller was bigger, muscled in a way that suggested he did manual labor for a living, but he was undoubtedly being overpowered by the thunker. The thunker was moaning, jaw hanging to the side when he wasn't snapping his mouth closed in an attempt to bite the yeller.

 

[DZerpic]

Dante felt something was very odd with, what he assumed, was the thunker. He looked just like the cannibal. His head and body's moments reminded him of animals. He had no other words to describe him with, animal seemed the most addecuate, although it wasn't the correct word. This guys just moved like he's never seen before. The eyes hilled Dante to the bones, they were so empty, lifeless. He felt they were really dead, but, no it couldn't be.


If this guy was like the other, there'd be no point in trying to talk him down, they were both crazy. The yeller was clearly being overpowered. His reactions were clearly different from before. He was not angry, but afraid, now. Dante rushed to the pair and, feigning some ignorance, he asked "Need some help?" a bit jokingly. The joke was for himself, though, the whole situation had him on the edge, fear knocking on the doors of his concious mind.

 

[Fayth]

"Fuck, yes, I do!" The yeller grimaced, struggling with the thunker. Now that Dante was close enough to actually hear something besides vague words, it turned out the yeller had a thick British accent. He was thick in every sense of the word, actually, thick-necked, thick-bodied, thick-armed. He looked like he could bench-press Dante over his head.


The thunker droned on, spittle drooling from his open mouth.

 

[DZerpic]

Dante didn't know much about his neighbors as he was used to keeping a low profile. No one in that building was of the friendly type, anyways. Somehow the british accent reassured him a little. Maybe he felt some sympathy, since they were both far from home or maybe it was because he had found, at least, one sane person in that whole mess of a morning. Either way, he had to act.


Dante moved in close. He firmly closed his right fist, ready to punch the thumper right in the face. He holded there for a second, taken aback by the hideous lack of that "something"; a lack of humanity, in the man's face. But it was just a moment. Accompanied by a slight waist twist and a right toe raise, he threw a sturdy punch to the man's left cheek...

 

[Fayth]

No one would argue that Dante wasn't a fighter, but between his attempted punch and a shove from the Brit, they manage to knock the thunker backward and into his apartment long enough for the yeller to scramble backward. The thunker grunts as he hits the ground, and starts to slowly, ponderously stand up again, eyes still fixed on the yeller.


"C'mon now," the yeller calls, sprinting down the hall toward the stairs, "I think he's strong enough to knock down a couple doors if he wants, we gotta split!"

 

[DZerpic]

"But what the hell's wrong with him?!" Dante responds, following the brit down the corridor. "He some kind of psycho?!" Between the two of them, you'd think they would've knocked the fat man out. But no, he was just getting up, as if nothing ever happened. He didn't shout, scream, moan or even throw a couple insults either.

 

[Fayth]

"No clue, mate," the Brit huffs back as he wrenches the door open, "and I hate to say this, but the bobbies may be our best bet."


He starts to hustle down the stairs toward the front door as the moaning from behind them starts up again.

 

[DZerpic]

As they run down the stairs Dante recalls the cannibal next to his door.


"Wait! There's another one down here!" he whispers alarmed.

 

[Fayth]

"What, on the ground floor?" The Brit asks, pulling his hand back from the staircase door. "Then how the shit-" He takes a deep breath. "Alright, where was it?"

 

[DZerpic]

"He's right next to my apartment. In the middle of the corridor. He was . . . eating another man, my neighbor." Dante has a worried look on his face, his eyebrows pushing upwards.


"It's just one though. We can probably take him down, right?"

 

[Fayth]

"If we work together, hit hard and fast, and catch him with his trousers down," the Brit sighs, "then probably. We're right between a rock and a bloody hard place, we are."


With a shake of his head, the man braces himself against the door, ready to throw it open. "Right. No use moaning about it. You ready?"

 

[DZerpic]

Dante jumps in place a couple of times. His way of releasing some of the stress. "Nope." Joking around "But we've got no choice. Fatso, up there-" pointing upstairs, "- is probably on its way here."


He pauses, shuts his eyes for a second and takes a deep breath. "Let's do it"

 

[Fayth]

"Right then. On three, I'll run up and kick 'im, and you get 'em when he's down. One, two, three!" The Brit charges in to the hallway, immediately targeting the man crouched in the middle of the hallway. He jumps and snaps a kick upward, catching the man in the jaw. The bloody man's head snaps back, hitting the wall.

 

[DZerpic]

Dante rushes right behind the bulky brit. The adrenaline blinds him. He kicks the man's head the instant his body slams against the concrete.